


Out of the Double Boiler, Into the Fryer

by morrezela



Series: Chef Jensen & Faux Chef Jared [1]
Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Chefs, Alternate Universe - Restaurant, Blogging, Food, Grumpy Jensen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-03
Updated: 2015-05-03
Packaged: 2018-03-28 21:11:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3869932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morrezela/pseuds/morrezela
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jensen is a five star chef who likes to share recipes on his blog in his spare time. Jared is a man who randomly fries things and dares to call it food, but Jensen isn’t bitter in the least about how large of a following Jared has online.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Out of the Double Boiler, Into the Fryer

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: The people mentioned herein belong to themselves. This is a pure and utter work of fiction. Not a teeny, tiny drop of it is real.
> 
> Warnings: Vulgar language and the weird behaviors of kitchen workers.
> 
> A/N: This was written for bumblee for spn_j2_xmas 2011.
> 
> I tried to incorporate bumblee’s likes of Grumpy!Jensen, rivals, miscommunication, and rom-com into her absolutely adorable prompt for rival food bloggers.
> 
> Many thanks to cappy712 for the beta job!
> 
> All mistakes that you find are my own.

When Jensen started his blog, it was because he had a mission. He was a great cook and an even better chef, but night after night he would only see society’s elite in the restaurant he worked at. As a business man, he knew that it had to stay that way. The restaurant’s exclusivity and surrounding hype was what put food on his table and allowed him to make payments on the house that he was rarely at.

Jensen loved what he did for a living, but he was from a middle class background, and his parents had always taught him to give back. And in Jensen’s mind, the middle class was missing out on some truly awesome food.

Now some people would argue that there were already tons of websites and cookbooks and other various tools dedicated to teaching people to cook, and Jensen wouldn’t disagree with that. But he never set out to teach people how to cook so much as how to create a food experience that would make them happy.

Jensen remembered his mother’s kitchen. She had a job and kids and a husband who didn’t even know how to light his own grill when tasked with the Fourth of July barbeque. She didn’t have time for perfecting temperatures, and she sure didn’t have the time or the money to run around buying fancy ingredients that she couldn’t get at her local grocery store.

As a chef and five star cook, Jensen knew the importance of getting the right mushroom paired with the right onion. He knew that there was an important difference in the cuts and grades of beef, and he knew that there was a mother fucking difference between a shallot and an onion, okay?

It was just that Jensen knew that middleclass America didn’t have the money to care, but that didn’t mean that they were incapable of enjoying good food.

So Jensen started his blog to provide recipes that were pared down for the little guy. Good food on a small budget, tips and techniques for making a cheaper cut of beef palatable. Sure they weren’t the top shelf cuisine that Jensen liked to serve from his kitchen, but most people weren’t looking for that. They were looking for meals that had a touch of special to them, and Jensen aimed to give them what they wanted.

The problem was what the public apparently wanted was a no talent hack with stupid, fucking dimples and a propensity to deep fry the shit out of everything he touched.

Jared Padalecki was the bane of Jensen’s online existence. It wasn’t that he served up artery clogging recipes. Jensen had been through culinary arts school and braved the fiery depths of too many kitchens to condemn anybody for unhealthy ingredients in the name of gastronomic perfection.

No, the problem was that Jared didn’t appear to care about how anything tasted. His solution to unpalatable food seemed to default to adding lard and frying the crap out of whatever he was trying to serve.

Far be it from Jared Padalecki to miss a posting date on his site and take the time to correct his recipe problems. As far as Jensen could tell, when deep frying failed, Jared would video blog the damn thing anyway, distracting his followers with the sight of his annoyingly unkempt hair and washboard abs that were barely veiled by some obnoxiously tight shirt.

He didn’t even make an attempt to look sanitary by pulling his floppy hair back or covering his clothing with an apron. Jared openly mocked the world of culinary creativeness. He was the roller derby, no… the monster truck race of cooking blogs. Jensen was certain that one day he was going to tune into Jared’s blog and find a video featuring Jared in a mullet and spandex thong talking about the virtues of deep fat frying and how throwing cheap beer into the fryer makes pretty grease explosions.

It was true that Jensen knew better than to comment on Jared’s blog. Jared’s fans were scary in their fanaticism, and Jensen had thought that he had learned his lesson that one time that he had the temerity, or as follower had put it the, “fucking balls,” to point out that Misha Collins has posted the wrong measurements for his chocolate cake recipe.

If the internet had been real life, Jensen’s mother would have had to bury him with the way that ‘Misha’s Munchers’ had taken to Jensen’s blog in droves. It was only when the more radical of them had started harping on how ugly Jensen’s knife set was that they’d finally been driven away in shame.

Jensen’s knives were top notch. Handcrafted specifically for him, they had been made by the premiere cutlery maker in the world and were precisely weighted for his technique. Misha’s Munchers had left in shame, but Jensen had learned his lesson.

At least he thought he had.

But apparently a little too much alcohol really did impair his judgment because he made the mistake of pointing out how Jared’s deep fried coffee balls tasted like the air in a greasy spoon diner. It might not have been that bad, because with the combination of grease and Folgers coffee, yes Folgers, Jensen did not want to know how Jared's taste buds continued to survive, the ingredients were exactly what one would find in such a place. The only things that they were missing were some stale pie and a haggard looking waitress to serve them.

Jensen had righteousness on his side, some of Jared’s fans even had the guts to agree with him up to the point that they reached his intimation that maybe, just maybe, their beloved Jared didn’t taste his recipes before putting them out on the world wide web. Surely Jared couldn’t be tasting the crap he created. Or maybe, Jensen theorized, Jared did taste his own food and that was how he managed to keep the weight off despite the fact that his kitchen lived in an abyss of lard.

Attacking Jared’s cooking was one thing, but attacking the impeccable abs of doom was another. Jensen had never gotten called fat, ugly and stupid so many times in his life. It would’ve been laughable except for the fact that Jensen had been enough of an idiot to sign in with his real name.

What Jared’s groupies had that Misha’s Munchers did not was the ability to ignore any and all reason when it came to defending their star. Where Misha’s followers were freakish and obsessive, Jared’s had the fervor of the righteous. Jared’s ‘niceness’ overrode all common sense the people had. The fact that he was a ‘good guy’ meant that no criticism was allowed.

Jensen’s inbox got flooded with messages. It went on for a full week before one Mr. Jared Padalecki himself put up some heart touching post about forgiveness and proper behavior and how his site was about having fun with cooking. The beloved Padalecki did not approve of the flame wars that his friends (apparently they were too great of folks to be called ‘groupies’) were launching on Jensen. He even went so far as to make some sort of grandiose statement about wanting to become friends with Jensen and dared to suggest they could talk.

Like Jensen wanted anything to do with a cretin that deep fried marshmallows and called it dessert.

After Jared’s little peacemaking attempt, the personal attacks on Jensen’s website dropped off, but Jared’s post was forwarded to him so many times that he was tempted to pull his hair out. The number of messages telling him that he could learn something from Jared was staggering.

But Jensen’s mother had raised him to be the kind of guy to let petty attacks roll off his back. He’d had worse said about him, and he had not only survived it, but proven his naysayers wrong by succeeding in the cutthroat world of cuisine.

Eventually the interest of Jared’s groupies wore off as they started in on a new war with Misha’s Munchers. As far as Jensen could ever make out, there was some sort of accusation of fame hogging at a home show. He didn’t spend too much time looking into it. By the time that he was aware of the kerfuffle, it had already degraded into name calling and posturing.

And really, a home show? They worked a home show? That alone was not worth speaking about.

Jensen swore off looking at Jared’s blog and concentrated on his real work. For a solid month he toiled away in the kitchen of his actual restaurant and was rewarded with a third place finish on the city’s latest taste review. Everybody who was anybody in the eating circles knew that it was as good as a first place finish, better even.

The top two spots were there because of political reasons, and the traditional third place finisher had been hanging on to her spot simply because she was sleeping with the owner of the first place restaurant, and his political goodwill extended to her. Jensen’s victory was the equivalent of a dark horse upset, and he was thrilled.

High on his real life success, he logged into his blog to talk about it. He had sworn that he wouldn’t, but his family, while they were happy for him, didn’t quite get the enormity of what a third place finish meant. He figured his food groupies might, and he wanted somebody besides his aged bottle of port to celebrate with.

Only when he logged in, he found one of his devoted fans had linked him to Jared’s latest recipe. A recipe that was identical to one of Jensen’s except for the fact that the man had the gall to deep fry it.

Padalecki was deep frying Beef Wellington.

Jensen figured it said something about him that he was more upset with the desecration of a sacred dish than he was of the fact that Jared had blatantly stolen his recipe off his blog. The addition of the heathen deep frying was enough of a material change to the recipe that Jensen couldn’t sue him, but Jensen wasn’t the suing type anyway.

Jensen was the vindictive type, and the sacrilege of the act made Jensen want to get even. The gauntlet had so very clearly been thrown down, and Jensen Ackles did not back down from a challenge. He had defeated the mistress of political culture. He could damned well bring Padalecki down too.

The first step was to actually make Jared’s recipe. Jensen followed it word for word. He made the dish three times for scientific accuracy, posted the pictures in all of their bloody, and yet still tough, glory and posted a link to Jared’s recipe page.

As he predicted, Jared’s followers flocked to Jensen’s post in droves to defend their knight in shining armor. They accused Jensen of photo shopping his cooking. Then Jensen’s followers got into it with them because there was no way that Jensen made the dish three times and photo shopped the results, clearly Jared had photo shopped his.

Then Misha’s Munchers somehow got involved as some weird, impartial third party. As far as Jensen could tell, they spent their time trying to deconstruct everybody’s pictures to prove the validity of either party’s claims.

Naturally, they sided with Jensen because Jensen was right, but Jared’s followers started accusing the Munchers of harboring bad blood because of the home show thing, and that started a whole new war.

It was all spiraling out of control and back into petty arguments right in front of Jensen’s digital nose, so he caved to his baser instincts and embraced his caveman-ish need to not only win but dominate.

A little research and the help of his thirteen-year-old nephew later, Jensen’s handsome mug was hosted on an embedded video on his blog discussing the perfect way to brew a cup of coffee, complete with him in his Saturday morning bathrobe, blowing the steam from his first cup.

It was a lie. Jensen didn’t drink coffee on Saturday mornings in his pristine kitchen while he listened to birds chirp outside his window. He swallowed the stuff by the gallon as he dragged his sorry ass to his kitchen to start prepping for the Saturday night dinner rush.

But it was the internet, and people did not want to be distracted by facts. They just wanted to be mesmerized by a pretty face.

His followership doubled, and he even got defectors from Jared’s camp on the pretext of them wanting some ‘healthy’ recipes. Jensen didn’t buy it, but he figured that wasn’t the point. The point was that he had given Padalecki and his horrible deep fryer a sound whupping.

It should’ve made him feel small, but it really only made him feel good. He strutted around like a peacock at work, and he swore that he caught one of the food critics taking a picture of his ass.

When a photo spread of his ass as encased by his not so sexy, checkered chef’s pants was linked ‘anonymously’ to one of his posts a few days later, Jensen totally got an extra half a star ranking on his primavera when he threatened to expose the critic as a creepy, dirty picture taker.

Things were going great right up to the point that one Jared Padalecki, in all his dimpled glory, snagged himself a seating for Tuesday night dinner in Jensen’s restaurant.

Jensen spotted him through the ordering window, and he had to admit that Jared was even more stunning in person than he was on his stupid blog photos. He wasn’t lying about his height or his muscles even if he did prevaricate about the quality of his recipes.

The servers gushed about how nice he was, and every time that Jensen peeked around a corner to spy on his nemesis, Jared’s eyes were scanning the room like he was searching for something. Not being the stupid sort, Jensen knew that Jared was looking for him, so he kept out of sight.

Jared left a generous tip and no compliments for either the cook or the chef, but he did make another reservation. Jensen scowled when he was told the news, but he refused to be chased out of his own restaurant. If Padalecki wanted to have actual, good food cross his palate for a change, then Jensen wasn’t going to stop him, especially at the prices that the owners of the place charged.

The Padalecki reservation became a standing one after that, and Jensen had to admit that he was a little chagrinned that he didn’t know that his rival lived in the same city as he did. Not that he was the creepy sort that would’ve looked that up, but still… that kind of meant that Misha lived in the same vicinity if he and Jared did the same home show together, and Jensen had liked the freedom of the internet. He wasn’t one for the ‘small world’ feeling. It made him uncomfortable.

It shamed Jensen to admit that he spent so much time avoiding Jared, but he didn’t like to be exposed. There was a reason he stayed in the kitchen and didn’t swagger his ass out in the dining areas. There was a reason he was the chef and not the owner. It wasn’t that he didn’t like to perform to the crowds or even that he didn’t want to do his duty and kiss a little food critic ass.

He was just not good without a buffer between him and the rest of the world. He was too sarcastic. His humor was dry, and more than one person had become insulted when all that Jensen had intended was to inject a little bit of levity into a situation.

Jensen just wanted to avoid Jared because it was a reminder that he had sunk to the other man’s level. The flush of victory had waned over the course of a few weeks, and he had begun to feel the pangs of guilt about using his blog for something other than its intended purpose. Padalecki’s constant presence in his restaurant only served as a reminder of Jensen’s sins.

All of his avoidance turned out to be for naught. Jensen ended up running into Jared at the local gas station at one in the morning. Jensen had stayed after the restaurant close to help clean up and do early prep work. On his way home, he’d realized that he had forgotten to buy milk for his own home kitchen and just hadn’t felt like waiting until the next day to get it.

He hadn’t a foggy clue why Jared was there except that his long arms were loaded with candies and jerky, and if the guy kept eating like that, his intestines were going to be preserved forever. Archaeologists would dig up Jared’s remains one day and would be astounded as how they’d lasted.

“Jensen!” Jared gasped out in shock, and away went any hint of any hope that Jared didn’t know exactly who one Jensen Ackles was.

And of course he did. Jensen had outright attacked him on his blog, and Jared had not so subtly purloined one of Jensen’s recipes and butchered it in retaliation. But common etiquette still dictated that you didn’t use a guy’s first name before actually being introduced, didn’t it?

“Padalecki,” Jensen greeted as civilly as possible. It was best not to start a fight at the moment. He looked horrible. His hair was greasy from working the line when one of the cooks called in sick, and he’d been sweating for hours. Jared could be one of those bloggers that kept a phone on him at all times, and Jensen didn’t want a picture of himself surfacing online looking the way that he did. 

“Man, I thought that maybe I was going to have to send in a search party or something. Thought they had you chained up in that kitchen,” Jared babbled like Jensen was his friend.

“Uh-huh,” Jensen grunted as he started to shuffle his way to the cashier.

“You haven’t posted anything in days,” Jared continued as he trailed after Jensen like some lost puppy.

Jensen wanted to make a snippy comeback about Jared having to steal his material from somewhere else, but he was tired and trying to be good so he said, “Been busy,” instead.

“No kidding,” Jared replied with a small smile.

Jensen smiled wanly back and thought that he’d finally shaken the cretin when Jared piped up again with, “Hey, I know you’re busy and all, but you need to take a break once and a while. If you don’t, you’ll run yourself ragged.”

“Look, Padalecki,” Jensen snapped.

“Jared,” Padalecki offered with another stupid smile.

Jensen wanted to pour his milk over the idiot’s head, but he took a deep breath instead. “I appreciate your concern, but…”

“You should totally have breakfast with me,” Jared blurted out.

“What?” Jensen did not squeak. He didn’t know what it was that his vocal cords did, but they did not squeak.

Jared shrugged his shoulders and squeezed his candy laden arms closer to his chest. “We should have breakfast.”

Bafflement seemed like a good word for what Jensen was feeling “Why?” he asked.

“So that we can talk,” Jared answered with another sunny grin.

“You’re not going to cook are you?” Jensen asked suspiciously, and it took him a moment to realize that he hadn’t just turned the ludicrous offer down.

That fact seemed to have penetrated Padalecki’s thick skull as well because he was smiling again even though Jensen had just insulted him. “I was thinking Marge’s Diner over on Sixteenth Street? They have great coffee.”

Jensen scowled. He knew that they had great coffee. He’d recommended the place on his blog. “It’s not breakfast time.”

“It’s one in the morning. Breakfast is served in the morning,” Jared argued.

“Bars haven’t closed down yet, it isn’t time for breakfast,” Jensen argued right back. “And before you ask, I already ate dinner.”

“What about lunch then? Before you go into work?” Jared asked.

“Jared…”

“Come on. I’ll even pay,” Jared cajoled.

“I don’t need you to pay for my lunch,” Jensen told him.

“Fine. I’ll let you be an independent man and pay for your own meal. What time should we meet? Is noon too late? Should we aim for eleven instead?”

“Jared, I didn’t say that I was…”

“Please?” Jared asked, his forehead wrinkling and taking on the appearance of a very, very sad hound dog.

Jensen had never seen anything so pathetic in his entire life. “Fine. Okay. Lunch. At eleven thirty. At Marge’s. Can I check out and go home now?”

Jared grinned back and gestured towards the cash register and its overly interested cashier with his pointy chin. “Be my guest.”

As he stalked to the counter with his milk, Jensen was just relieved that Jared had quit talking. It wasn’t until he woke up the next morning that he realized that he, in fact, had not just agreed to meet up with his blogging nemesis for a competitive discussion about food.

No. Jared’s invitation had the distinct tang of ‘date’ to it. Rivals did not offer to purchase food unless there was a wager involved, and they weren’t friends that they would pay for each other’s meals. Jensen wondered if maybe Jared was just desperate for a date although that seemed unlikely. The guy was good looking and seemed to be outgoing. God knew that enough of the wait staff at the restaurant were in love with him already.

But maybe Jared was one of those men that enjoyed when things were a challenge. It seemed possible. Jensen couldn’t think of any other reason that Jared would be trying to come on to him. He might have stolen the hearts of some of Jared’s followers, but that wasn’t any reason to try to employ some Hollywood plot device of wooing your rival only to attack them afterwards.

Jensen would call and cancel if he could, but Jared had left him without a phone number, and there was no way on Earth that Jensen was going to leave a cancellation note on the guy’s message board. There was an email account associated with the blog for raising questions or concerns, but he doubted that Jared checked that constantly, and Jensen was not the kind of person that would stand up a date, especially when that date was with a beloved internet figure who could easily tell his followers that Jensen had jilted him.

When Jensen got to the diner, the hostess didn’t even wait for him to clear the door before she was coming forward and ushering him to the booth in the far back corner.

“He’s a bundle of nerves,” she whispered through her customer appropriate grin.

Jared looked it. His long, pelican like legs were jiggling, and his fingers were drumming on the table top. The instant he spotted Jensen, he started grinning like a loon and popped out of the booth, slamming one of his knees into the table top as he went.

“You made it!”

“Yes, yes I did,” Jensen said as he quickly slid into his side of the booth, deftly avoiding what looked like an oncoming hug.

“Good, good that’s good,” Jared said as he gave the waitress a slightly less sunny smile and took his own seat again.

“So,” Jensen said as he cast about looking for something to say. His eyes flitted across the table, and he was surprised to see a little metal teapot on the table. “Tea?” he asked.

“Yeah, I kind of got cut off from coffee earlier,” Jared said as he flushed.

Jensen tried not to look shocked. “Really?”

“I thought he was going to shoot up through the roof every time the door opened,” the waitress said as she placed Jensen’s water and customary cup of coffee in front of him.

“Molly,” Jared hissed.

“Oh, you shut up,” she ordered, “I’ve listened to you go on and on and on about Jensen for how long now?”

“Molly, you’re embarrassing me,” Jared reprimanded, the tips of his ears turning red.

Jensen smiled and tried to break the tension by saying, “Don’t worry. You were doing a fine job of that by yourself.”

As two incredulous stares honed in on him, Jensen reminded himself that there was a reason he didn’t go out in public places very often.

“I mean, I just…” Jensen forced his mouth shut. He knew from experience that if he kept talking, things would only get worse.

“Nice,” Molly muttered as she slammed Jensen’s menu down and walked away.

Jared was suspiciously quiet, and Jensen stared at the front of his menu for a few seconds before telling it, “I didn’t mean it that way.”

Jared cleared his throat, but Jensen refused to look up.

“It’s really hard to talk to you when you won’t look at me,” Jared mumbled.

“Look, Jared,” Jensen began, “this wasn’t so great of an idea. I’m very… not good at this.”

“No! This was a great idea. A perfect idea. We should do it again,” Jared disagreed instantly.

“You’re supposed to say that at the end of a date,” Jensen pointed out.

“You were just trying to end it. I just happen to be good at stopping people from making stupid decisions.”

“Great, then the next time I get drunk and decide to make nasty posts about your cooking on your blog then I can call you so you can tell me to stop,” Jensen huffed.

Jared, instead of getting snippy, looked happy. “Writing on my blog was a great idea.”

“Yeah, I love getting roasted with emoticons. I’m thinking of using that technique on my next goose special,” Jensen drawled sarcastically.

“Not that, I mean I think that your goose wouldn’t get cooked that way, right? But I wouldn’t have ever seen your blog if you hadn’t drunkenly posted to mine, and then I wouldn’t have read your posts to see how smart and funny you are,” Jared gushed.

“Seriously?”

“Seriously,” Jared affirmed.

Jensen wasn’t sure how he felt about that. “You stole my recipe,” he blurted out after a moment’s thought. That didn’t seem like something an enamored guy should do.

Jared shrugged. “Yeah, well, you didn’t respond to my post about getting to know each other, and I needed to get your attention somehow.”

“You wanted to get my attention by violating a perfectly good cut of beef?” Jensen asked just as Molly walked back to the table.

“Ruining!” Jared hastily interjected. “Ruining as in making it taste bad and not, you know, doing dirty things to it!”

Molly didn’t look like she bought Jared’s explanation.

“He desecrated Beef Wellington,” Jensen told her.

That seemed to make her relax a little. She shook her head and gave Jared’s shoulder a nudge. “I told you that taking that recipe was a stupid, juvenile thing to do.”

“It got his attention, didn’t it?” Jared seemed rather proud of that fact.

“You discussed this with our waitress?” Jensen asked.

“She wasn’t our waitress at the time. Or, well, I guess you’ve been here before so she probably has been your waitress, and she was waiting on me when I talked to her about it, but she wasn’t ours together and…”

“And idiot here got a big crush on you before he ever even knew what you looked like. Then he saw what you looked like and got all upset that you might be taken or, GOD FORBID, straight,” Molly finished for Jared.

“I wouldn’t put it exactly like that,” Jared muttered.

“How you put it?” Jensen asked.

“I liked you and wanted to take you somewhere for breakfast, but you’re ornery and wanted lunch instead,” Jared answered.

Jensen was gracious and didn’t mention that he’d gotten steamrolled into their date. He figured it would be a moot point when discussing things with somebody like Jared, so he ordered his lunch and made small talk until he could go.

Somehow, during their polite talking time, Jared managed to get Jensen’s phone number out of him. That was a very big tactical error on Jensen’s part.

It wasn’t that Jared was needy or creepy. To the contrary, he was incredibly agreeable. Whenever he texted Jensen or called him, he never sent follow-ups or whined about why Jensen didn’t get back to him right away. He was understanding about Jensen’s working schedule and was even nice enough to send thoughtful, though silly, cat pictures to Jensen at the end of his shift.

Of course his agreeableness could just be coming from the fact that he’d wrangled his way into another date with Jensen before they’d left the restaurant. In person Jared was like a force of nature. A giant, good humored, happy force of nature that made a guy feel two inches tall if he tried to say ‘no’ to what Jared was asking.

Jensen felt small enough around Jared, and it was just plain unfair that Jared was a nice guy. It would be far easier on him if Jared was the jackass that he was supposed to be.

“Jensen!” Jared greeted on the evening of their second date.

“That’s me,” Jensen lamely agreed.

“You made it.”

“Did you think that I wouldn’t?”

“Well, you’ve been busy lately, and I was thinking that you might cancel because you were tired or something,” Jared admitted.

The ‘or something’ seemed to be the greater of his concerns by the way that he spoke, but Jensen just nodded instead of following up on the issue. Jared was a grown man, if he wanted to discuss something, he would. Besides, it wasn’t as if Jensen was pursuing anything with the guy.

They were seated and had placed their orders by the time that Jared spoke up.

“I posted another recipe today,” he offered.

“Oh?” Jensen tried to keep his face neutral. He didn’t believe in making scenes in restaurants. It was bad karma. He just hoped that Jared wasn’t about to ask him what he thought. There were many things that Jensen would lie about, but food wasn’t one of them.

“Deep fried guacamole with a tortilla chip breading,” Jared said, his eyes turning intense like it was some sort of revelation from on high.

Jensen couldn’t keep himself from asking, “Why?”

“You don’t like the idea?”

“I’m sitting here wondering what an innocent avocado ever did to you,” Jensen corrected.

“I do it because it’s fun,” Jared reasoned.

“For who? Football fans who want to choke on their arteries as they get older?”

Jared’s lips thinned, and his jaw muscles tensed, but he didn’t say anything else.

Dinner wasn’t pleasant, and Jensen walked out without the dreaded third date.

What surprised Jensen was how bad he felt. He didn’t regret expressing his opinion even if he did it in his typical socially unacceptable manner, but he sort of missed Jared’s funny little messages. It had been nice to get the random ‘thinking of you’ notes, and Jared wasn’t a bad guy even if his taste buds were severely misguided.

It wasn’t normal for Jensen to miss somebody like that. He’d only known Jared for a short amount of time, and he wasn’t the kind of guy that formed attachments easily.

By the seventh day that he hadn’t heard from Jared, Jensen caved and checked Jared’s blog. His latest post was lacking in pep to put it mildly. Gone were the crazy emoticons and even crazier pictures of Jared’s face twisted into the same expressions. The recipe was, as Jensen could have predicted, a deep fried one: homemade cauliflower to be exact, complete with cheese dipping sauce.

For once, Jensen actually approved, but even though the recipe looked edible, it wasn’t getting Jared’s normal rave reviews. It was actually getting received fairly tepidly. With the way that Jared’s fan base was normally so overtly vocal about how super wonderful their star was, Jensen figured it was the equivalent of that time that Misha’s Munchers had torn Misha a new one over recycling a recipe because he had a hangover from a beer expo that he’d emceed.

So Jensen did what he did best on the internet. He got his ass in trouble by posting a review of the recipe and complementing its flavor combinations.

It took all of five minutes for the flame wars to start and after eight minutes, the personal character assassinations began. Apparently he was an absolute tool who was obviously being facetious in his compliments. Jensen was a hoity toity food snob who was kicking Jared when he was so obviously down. His ‘so called compliment’ was really just an attempt to sway Jared’s loyal and true fans over to his ‘den of iniquity’ where he was going to brainwash the masses into buying his ‘hoi polloi’ food talk.

Jensen shut his computer down in disgust. Clearly he just needed to admit that he was an enormous failure when it came to anything other than a kitchen.

When Jensen dragged his ass into work the next day, he never imagined that he’d hear a shout of, “Don’t let him near my fryer!” while he was taking stock of how many lemons were left in the cooler.

Granted, it wasn’t the last thing he had expected to hear. Cooks tended to be a temperamental and possessive bunch. Jensen had once gotten in an actual fencing match with his butcher’s blade because Paul the front line griller swore that the cast iron skillet was his, and Jensen so knew that Suzy was his and his alone.

Of course, Jensen had had his custom made blades on him, and everybody knew that Paul bought the knockoffs from the Import Palace, so Jensen won by default when Paul’s blade broke.

But it was still early in the day for a fight, and Jensen didn’t want anything to escalate into a health citation because blood got spilled in the kitchen, so he walked away from his lemons and stormed back towards the fryers to stop whatever fight was brewing by making everybody hate him.

Teamwork was essential, and if all the cooks were busy focusing their loathing on the head chef, then they weren’t going to have time to stab each other in the back – literally or figuratively.

“WHAT IS GOING ON IN MY KITCHEN?” Jensen bellowed as he stomped out of the walk-in cooler.

What was happening was Jake was standing in front of his beloved deep fat fryers wielding a bamboo spoon while Michael was tightly gripping the bottle neck of the white cooking wine. Whether he meant to attack their interloper with it or drink it was a tossup. Cooks also liked to sample the alcohol. Jensen had met more than one who claimed that it helped them to express themselves.

But his inflated and unreasonable anger evaporated when he saw Jared standing there, big shoulders hunched and eyes darting back and forth like a deer surrounded by wolves.

“Jensen! It’s in my kitchen!” Rose shrieked from over by the ovens.

“Let’s all calm down,” Jensen soothed as he started moving towards Jared.

“Calm down? Calm down? He deep fried a protein mix last week! He’s a fryer abuser! He puts things in it that it doesn’t want!” Jake said as he came within an inch of cuddling his stainless steel mistress.

“Ummm, sorry?” Jared offered. Jensen felt a little sorry for him; he’d obviously never been in a high end kitchen before.

“What is it doing here?” Rose asked as she crept closer, hiding behind Jensen’s much larger frame.

Jared looked like he was heading past shock and straight to tears. It was a good thing that his gifts were more in social media than in cooking, because he clearly did not have the right attitude for a kitchen. Everybody knew that you responded to an insult with a greater insult and then vulgar language until you cooked your frustrations out in your food. The great cooks made masterpieces this way. The bad ones burned stuff and worked at roadside diners because not even McDonald’s would hire them.

“Jake, Rose,” Jensen addressed each of them, “apologize to Jared.”

“What for?” they both asked at the same time.

Michael started fiddling with the label on the wine bottle he was holding.

“Because you hurt his feelings,” Jensen explained patiently.

They both looked at him like he was insane and backed away. Michael just tipped the bottle at him in salute and took a swig directly from it.

“Michael, do not drink directly from the bottle. Were you born in a barn? Now we can’t use that,” Jensen snapped as he took the bottle away.

“He’s hot,” Michael said in response, pointing a knife in Jared’s direction before going back to chopping the onions he was supposed to have finished fifteen minutes ago.

“Umm, hey,” Jared said once everybody was back to their tasks and completely failing at them because they were eavesdropping.

“Hi,” Jensen said brusquely as he dragged Jared out of the kitchen and out into the restaurant. The hostess and wait staff would still eavesdrop on them, but they were the workers who were paid to deal with the public. They’d be civilized about it.

“Can you just stop for a moment?” Jared asked as he yanked his arm out of Jensen’s grip.

“Of course, I just…”

“I get that you want me out of your stupid kitchen, and I get that I’m like some culinary criminal, but you don’t have to treat me like this,” Jared continued ignoring Jensen for once. “I have had a horrible week, okay? And then you were all nice to me last night, and I just. I just. I wanted to come see you.”

Jensen pulled out the nearest chair from a table and gestured at it. “Sit down,” he ordered as he pulled his own chair out.

Jared slumped into the chair, and the vintage wood creaked in protest at the weight dropping into it so suddenly.

“I’m going to tell you something about me,” Jensen started off, and damn if Jared’s head didn’t perk up. It was sad.

“Jared, I’m not good with my mouth,” he blurted out quickly.

Lisa the hostess started snickering, and Tom the waiter oddly started having a coughing fit. But Jared’s lips lifted in a miniature version of his normal smile, and Jensen figured that it was worth it.

“I think that what you are is a colossal failure at communication,” Jared pointed out.

“Yeah, well you’re a dork,” Jensen shot back.

“Worse, I’m a geek who got his internet crush to go out with him,” Jared said, “and I’m also that guy who believes in love at first sight. I’ve got to tell you that it was a pretty harsh blow when I realized that you didn’t feel the same way.”

Jensen felt bad about that, but he figured that he might as well be honest. “Two dates just aren’t enough…”

“You got Jensen to go out on a date? Twice?” Lisa interrupted.

“Do you mind?” Jensen snapped at her.

“It’s a public place,” she argued.

“Not until the doors open to the public it isn’t. Go make swan napkins or something,” Jensen made a shooing motion at her, and she flipped him off as she went.

“She always seemed so nice,” Jared commented as she walked away.

“She gets part of the tip you leave for the waiters,” Jensen said dismissively.

“Is it true that you don’t date much?” Jared asked.

“With the way I am? Yeah. I’m kept in the kitchen for a reason, Jared. I’m nice to look at, but I’m no good at playing nice. It is part of the reason I started that stupid blog, you know? I thought that if I had enough time to think things through and had everything on my terms that I’d be able to get over whatever it is about me that makes me so unpalatable.”

Jared frowned at Jensen’s words, and for a moment he was worried that Jared was going to into the same speech that Jensen’s mother always did about him being perfect and accepting himself.

But when Jared opened his mouth what came out was, “Well it’s a good thing I have horrible taste isn’t it?”

Jensen couldn’t help the bark of laughter that came out of his mouth, and that set Jared’s grin off. It was like a clichéd ray of sunshine, and Jensen couldn’t help but agree, “Yeah, yeah it is.”


End file.
